The Boss That Never Blinks

By Stephen Koepp

So you think your boss is inhuman? A real automaton who never lets up, never forgets the slightest error you make? Then just wait until a computer takes over as manager.

For many U.S. workers, that day has arrived. In nearly any job in which computer terminals are a tool for workers, and that is a lot of jobs in today's economy, the machines now have the capability of monitoring an employee's performance. Result: millions of computer users are toiling under the relentless gaze of electronic supervision. In thousands of U.S. offices, stores and factories, workers who once could get away with goofing around can be seen hustling through their tasks as though the bosses were watching them every minute.

Of course, that is exactly the idea. Major corporations ranging from United Airlines to Equitable Life have installed monitoring systems for some employees in the hope of boosting productivity. More than 13 million Americans use computer terminals in their jobs, and about one-third of these people are being scrutinized as they work. Since the number of terminal users is expected to triple by the end of the decade, computer monitoring may be on its way to becoming the next big management buzz word.

The exact technique depends on the job to be supervised, but monitoring requires only the installation of specially written software into the central computer that handles the work of many individual terminal users. Thus equipped, the master computer then will not only process information from each employee's terminal but also measure, record and tabulate dozens of details about how efficiently the worker is putting information into the machine.

Airline-reservation computers, for example, closely measure how long individual clerks take to handle each customer and the amount of time the employee spends between calls. The computer takes note of any idle moment and measures lunch hours, coffee breaks and even trips to the bathroom. At grocery stores, optical scanners not only ring up prices but also tell a central computer how many items per minute the clerk is handling, as well as other information. Even in factories where employees operate complex electronic machine tools rather than keyboards, computers can monitor the equipment and alert management about slow or absent workers.

Instead of supervising the old way, by peering over an employee's shoulder from time to time and trying to guess from observation how well the subordinate performs, a manager can now simply look into a worker's computer dossier and immediately see, for instance, an exact record of how many letters a week a secretary has been handling on her word processor. The manager can compare one worker objectively with all the others, then reward the speedy ones and warn the laggards. Not all employees find the surveillance oppressive. In fact many, particularly the hardest workers, prefer the new evaluative technique because they see it as a matter-of-fact measurement of their output as opposed to a boss's personal opinion. Says R. Douglas MacIntyre, a senior vice president of Management Science America, which develops monitoring programs: "We are letting management make better, quicker decisions based on facts, not emotions."

Despite those benefits, computer supervision has a dark side that is becoming a major issue for workers, labor leaders and scholars. The ability to record so much information about an employee could tempt managers to snoop too deeply into personal behavior and invade privacy. Just as ominously, the pressure of being monitored every second is already producing undesirable side effects in some workers, notably high stress and low morale. Declares Karen Nussbaum, director of 9 to 5, a national group of workingwomen: "The potential for corporate abuse is staggering. It puts you under the gun in the short run and drives you crazy in the long run." Tales of computer bosses have already become part of labor folklore. When the New York Times installed a software system to monitor the performance of its clerks who take classified ads over the telephone and type them into terminals, some employees donned buttons that read, BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING.

Fearful of a backlash, corporations tend to be hesitant about describing the inner workings of their monitoring programs. Says Barton Reppert, publisher of Office Health & Safety Monitor, a newsletter: "Many companies won't say anything in detail about it. It's a very sensitive area." Companies with thousands of workers doing repetitive jobs tend to operate some of the most stringent monitoring systems. At Pacific Southwest Airlines offices in San Diego and Reno, the master computer records exactly how long the 400 reservation clerks spend on each call and how much time passes before they pick up their next one. Workers earn negative points for such infractions as repeatedly spending in excess of an average 109 seconds handling a call, and taking any more than twelve minutes in bathroom trips beyond the hour a day they are allotted for lunch and coffee breaks. Employees can lose their jobs if they rack up more than 37 points in a year.

PSA, after using a more relaxed monitoring system for the past six years, imposed the point system last March. The tension immediately went up, workers claim. One PSA clerk, Judy Alexander, a 14-year veteran, took a disability leave last month after compiling 24 demerit points. Says she: "You're a nervous wreck. The stress is incredible." Observes a fellow clerk and local union official, Toni Watson: "It's a very oppressive way to work. To be plugged into that boob tube and not be able to move gets under your skin sometimes." PSA defends its system as a productivity booster and says it is no more severe than the monitoring at other airlines.

One of the first industries to use computer monitoring in a big way was the telephone business. Operators at AT&T now handle 600 to 700 customers a day, compared with 150 calls during the early 1970s. The difference, contends Charles Thornton, AT&T's director of operator services, is that automation has made each call easier to handle. Employees, however, say that computer supervision requires machinelike performance from them that takes no account of their personal ups and downs. Says one eight-year veteran: "If I'm ever slow, the company will know. It means I can't have a bad day."

Computer supervision has made inroads in other businesses as well. At a Ford Motor plant in Batavia, Ohio, computers keep a running record of each employee's absences. Perfect attendance for a year can bring a prize of $500. Industrial companies have been less inclined than service firms to impose stringent computer monitoring of employee work. Tradesmen and other blue- collar workers tend to be highly resentful of automated supervision and frequently find ways to circumvent or sabotage it. Harley Shaiken, associate professor of labor and technology at the University of California at San Diego, tells in his 1984 book Work Transformed that in one particular factory, workers learned to fool the computer monitor by leaving the motors on their machines running even when the operators were away on extended coffee breaks. In the end, though, the computer caught up with them by detecting that the idling machines were using less electricity than normal.

The move toward monitoring has ignited a boom for companies that produce the necessary software. A Utah-based firm, Clyde Digital Systems, makes a program called AUDIT that records every single keystroke by a terminal operator. "It permits total surveillance of all users, all of the time," boasts company President Allan Clyde. Some software is more manipulative, according to a report on computer monitoring issued last April by the 9 to 5 group. One such program berates workers with messages that say, "You're not working as fast as the person next to you."

Since monitoring provides an exact measure of a worker's productivity, several companies have combined the technology with pay-for-performance programs. At Automatic Data Processing, a New Jersey computer-services giant, data-entry typists who work efficiently can boost their salaries by as much as 40%. An employee typing 18,000 keystrokes an hour -- or five per second -- earns a top pay of $20,000 to $24,000.

Such incentives motivate many employees, but others view computer monitoring as a throwback to 19th century sweatshops, where workers were paid according to their output. Today's version of piecework comes into play when employers set quotas that they want workers to meet under the new monitoring systems. Labor leaders contend that the working speeds are often set according to how fast the equipment can go, rather than what pace is comfortable for an average employee. Says Joseph Weizenbaum, professor of computer science at M.I.T.: "There is a widespread notion among employers that it is bad ever to let the computer wait -- ever to let it sit idle. We should realize that a few seconds aren't going to matter and say, 'Let's be human about this.' "

In their zeal to monitor the quantity of worker output, some companies may begin to overlook a factor more difficult to measure: quality. Says Terry Maltbie, secretary-treasurer of the Communications Workers union local in Landover, Md.: "Telephone operators used to be a voice with a smile, but automation has depersonalized their jobs." Courtesy and carefulness remain important but elusive factors in many service-industry tasks. Notes Columbia University Professor Alan Westin, an authority on office automation: "In these types of jobs, companies who count numbers too closely will lose their edge."

Companies that have adopted computer supervision maintain that it enables them to use fewer frontline bosses. Monitoring programs can be designed to highlight problems to make them more apparent to human supervisors. Nonetheless, some managers are getting "enormous stacks of printouts on worker productivity and finding them almost impossible to really make sense of," according to Sanford Sherizen, a Massachusetts consultant who is preparing a report on monitoring for the federal Office of Technology Assessment.

As technology progresses, firms will have ever greater capabilities to keep track of employee behavior. Many large companies already monitor the records of long-distance numbers dialed by their workers in order to discourage wasteful and personal use. In the future, newer technology may enable bosses to track local calls as well. Speculates Jerry Berman, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Project on Privacy and Technology: "Not only will they see who's calling dial-a-porn, but also who's calling a union organizer or the newspaper."

Labor groups have gone on the offensive against monitoring. More than 20 unions, including autoworkers and communications employees, have negotiated provisions in their contracts to limit the practice. The legislatures of several states, including Wisconsin and Rhode Island, have reportedly discussed laws to regulate monitoring. Computer supervision may have established itself in the workplace, but many legal skirmishes will no doubt be waged to determine just how far it should intrude into people's lives.

With reporting by Charles Pelton/San Francisco and Seth Shulman/Boston